Ex-convict guilty of sex assault on 74-year-old widow

An ex-convict from Chicago was convicted today of climbing into an apartment where he beat and sexually assaulted an Elgin widow, a crime a prosecutor described as a “most horrible” attack.

A Kane County jury needed only about 90 minutes to find Rodney L. McGowan, 42, guilty of home invasion, aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated battery of a senior citizen.

Police say McGowan entered the 74-year-old woman’s apartment through an open window on the night of April 23, 2010, and once inside, he pummeled the sleeping woman in the face with his fist before sexually assaulting her. She suffered a facial fracture and a broken orbital bone.

“She had a right to put on a robe, lie down on the couch and crochet, and that right was violated in a most horrible way,” Kane County Assistant State’s Atty. Joseph Cullen told the jury during the closing arguments Friday morning.

Prosecutors contended that McGowan, of the 1000 block of North Monticello Avenue, had a relationship with a woman at the Buena Vista apartments, where the widow also lived. Security footage captured an image of a man matching McGowan’s description leaving the victim’s apartment building.

But there was also substantial evidence that prosecutors said pinned McGowan to the crime. Authorities say they found a used condom under the victim’s couch with DNA that matched McGowan’s. They also recovered his fingerprints from a nearby condom wrapper and on a window sill.

The victim testified, but was unable to provide a description of her attacker because of her injuries.

Judge Timothy Sheldon, who presided over the four-day trial, set Aug. 25 for sentencing. McGowan could face 120 years in prison, prosecutors said.

McGowan already has spent much of his adult life in prison, serving almost 21 years in Arkansas for a conviction on burglary, theft and kidnapping, according to that state’s department of corrections. He was released from prison there in 2006.